Death-How long does the brain survive

I know this may sound morbid, it is mostly something I have thought about and have exhaisted any research I could do, mostly because I can't find any studies. So I turn here.
If a person was decapatatied --clean and quick-- how long do you think the brain would survive? a minute? 2 minutes? I mean you can hold your breath for 2 to 4 minutes..no Oxygen entering your body and thoughts still occur. Would you be aware of what happened? Of course you would not be aboe to express any thoughts due to the lack of a larynx, but do you think the brain would function for at least a little bit? Would it be kinda like slowly drifiting to sleep IE darker and darker? Or do you think there would be an instantaneous nothing....
These are answers that we could only specualte on, but I am interested in hearing your point of view.

This might help NetStorm, I really had no clue other than the fact that the legal definition of death is brain death. So I loked it up:
Brain Death
Brain Death
Brain Death


seekerof

i think that the brain is still alive for 30 seconds, but the shock of the decapitation makes you unconscious. i remember reading that somewhere.

I think the lack of blood would render you unconscious fairly quickly. Look at a fighter pilot when pulling �G�s�. After only a couple of seconds they pass out due to lack of blood pressure in the brain. If your head was cut off your blood pressure would be 0 instantly bring death within seconds.

Thanks for all your replies, I had found the part regarding Brain Death, I guess my morbid curiosity would be about the thoughts the person would have. Thoughts-Thinking-Electical impulses have always amazed me, their life span etc. I mean really after a thought is "thought" where does it go? Short term Memory? Why do thoughts re-occur? storage? I know these may sound stupid and inane, but think about it..a thought is esentially an electrical impulse that carries information, not just "word" information, but visual and auditory and ofalctory. Why would it not be possible to capture these thoughts? After all in essence they are a radio signal and operate on a frequency correct?
If you ever get a chance to hear a litty ditty that OMNI produced on a tape called "Think a Thought" listen to it...makes you think

Thanks again.

Wow NetStorm this is quite the ponderance..........excellant question proving yourself to be the 'anti brain dead' type.....
Smart people are so MUCH fun!
Good links Seeker!

The problem is that a 'thought' is an almalgamation of the myraid of imputs, all parallel processed by different neurons. You'd have to capture them all, and translate them from a digital format into something recognizable.

DE

Originally posted by DeusEx
The problem is that a 'thought' is an almalgamation of the myraid of imputs, all parallel processed by different neurons. You'd have to capture them all, and translate them from a digital format into something recognizable.

DE

So why hasn't anyone tried? It's obvious that we can record them, IE EEG,
Here is an interesting link of a guy that actually interfaced a monkeys brain with a computer.

gtalumni.org...

"Dr. Philip R. Kennedy, a neural prosthetic researcher at Georgia Tech, is developing a device to record signals from the brain, which could allow severely disabled persons unable to speak to mentally communicate through a computer. And the research could enable quadriplegics to regain some control of their limbs by bypassing damaged spinal nerves"

Think of the possibilties....